You want to look like a freakin' Gamemastering Genius? You'll need to work on that, but this product will certainly help! Levi breaks down a variety of dramatic plot structures for RPGs in a way that makes it easy to insert your own world and personae. I originally downloaded free versions of some of these templates, but this product packages them nicely and provides some improved presentation.

Dreaming Spires is an adventure for Triple Ace Games' Leagues of Adventure RPG.

The adventure is set in late 19th century England, and has a structure and feel not unlike that of the first Robert Downy Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie. The Globetrotters are asked by an aristocratic family to seek out their missing son who was expelled from his studies at Cambridge, and in the process stumble on a sinister plot that could shake the foundations of the empire!

The adventure is loosely organized into "episodes", and the episodes into scenes. The episodes are roughly in order of the way they are likely to occur, but there is some flexibility built in; players can easily surge ahead in the plot and skip earlier scenes, and perhaps double back to ones that they might have missed.

The adventure incorporates a lot of actual historical locations and a few historical figures. The author weaves these details into the backstory so they become somewhat important. She certainly did her research here (or is an expert on the history of Cambridge); there were many places where I wondered if she was just creating fanciful details but found out they were real, like the Cambride Apostles and Russian Cosmosism. This makes for a flavorful and realistic-feeling backdrop to the adventure.

Of course, this is written for steampunk game and you will find the requisite wierd science inventions in there.

Though a strong adventure, I do think it is best for experienced GMs. There are places that I had to improvise to keep things on track and conceive where certain important NPCs would be at certain times where the adventure is not explicit; some sort of dramatis personae, NPC overview, and/or relationship map would have been helpful to this end. Also, though the plans and techniques of the NPCs are well detailed, for the most part, descriptions of their physical appearance was lacking, a detail my players quizzed me about and had to make up on the spot.

Overall, it was a fun adventure to run in the action-investigation steampunk mold, and I can't wait to see the next installment in the series!

The PDF contains the One Man Army expert class and the partner feat chain.

What is the one man army?

I'll spell it out for you: John McClaine. Yeah, there are other "tough guy" hero figures, but I'd have to say that it's the Die Hard movies series that made the concept deserve its own class.

There are no class skills for crashing cars into helicopters. But there is a class ability called "Yippee-ki-yay". The class abilities are all about taking a lot of punishment and dishing it out against all odds (one ability, I stand alone, gives BIG bonuses when you are outnumbered.)

Of course, the class works well for any of your classical punishment-taking heroes like Rambo or your typical Van Damme character (Martial Artist/OMA!). I'm sure Jack Bauer had a few level in it by season 5 of 24.

Of course, if the class says "Die Hard", the Partner Feat Chain said "Lethal Weapon". Or, any of a number of martial arts flicks with good "partner" fight choreography. There are 3 feats in feat chain (standard for SC 2.0 feat chains). Partner basics lets you elect one "partner" at the beginning of a combat, and gives bonuses to your partner while adjacent. The later feats give more bonuses, and all of the feat's have bonuses that improve if your partner has the feat chain 2.

In addition to the actual mechanics, there are brief sections with recommendations for making a character using the class, and ideas for playing the character, including cultural influences. (They didn't mention Die Hard, but maybe they thought it was obvious.)

The one thing I felt was missing: it always seems like tough guys are getting tortured and shrugging it off. But there is nothing in the OMA class other than resolve as a class skill that really emphasizes that. The poor OMA doesn't even have a good will save. I'm thinking if I ever run this class, a bonus Hold Out feat may make in somewhere into the mix.

In the final analysis, for under 2 dollars, it seems like some players will derive some fun from the mental nuggets that this class and feat chain convey, which should make it worth it.

Modern20 is a game of modern action by RPGObjects. As RPGObjects' bread and butter has been D20 Modern, it should come as little surprise that this product covers similar ground as D20 Modern and shares many of the same assumptions. It's essentially Charles Rice answer to what ails D20 Modern.

Modern20 is a 108 page PDF priced at $10, currently available at RPGnow and PRGOjects' web store. The document has a full color front and back cover and color interior art; two more pages are the open game license.

Modern20 does not carry the D20 logo or compatibility statements, but does use the open game license.

The book is illustrated by Anthony Cournoyer. His style is a bit cartoony for my tastes, but not too far from the artwork of Kalman Andrasofszky, whose art is one of the signature visual features of Wizards of the Coast's D20 Modern products.

The PDF file makes good use of bookmarks. There is a convenient and intuitive hierarchy, and the bookmarks go down to the level of individual feats.

The layout was generally attractive and readable. I didn't notice any table formatting gaffes. There is good use of header and body fonts. The only section that I thought could be laid out better was the sample NPC section, which had frequent breaks in the middle of stat blocks.

A Deeper Look

I think it's fair before I begin to familiarize the reader with where I am coming from. As some ENWorld familiars may know, I am a fan of the Spycraft system, and in particular the Spycraft 2.0 rules. Though I have made good use of D20 Modern in my home games and think it makes a good substrate to build upon, I've long felt that it has significant weaknesses as a modern gaming system.

There are a number of third party publishers of D20 Modern material. Of these, RPG Objects is one of the best, producing a number of outstanding rules supplements and settings, in particular, the “Blood” line of supplements and Darwin's World. As such, it should be interesting to see how they treat the topic of a refined competitor to the game that has been their bread & butter.

As Modern20 is a complete, stand-alone game, it will naturally need to come up with its own take on how to handle ability scores. The system uses the classic 6 D20 abilities: strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. The modifiers are the same as you may be used to, but instead of copying the table out of the PHB/D20 Modern rulebook, it simply states the formula. That works for me (being an engineer), but there are probably a few folks who still work from the table. In this case, it's safe that you continue to do so.

Generating ability scores is another topic that the book has to muster on it's own and cannot copy from D20 Modern. Several methods are presented, for the most part emulating existing methods. The point gen methods aren't an exact duplicate of existing methods; they actually seem a bit simpler and punish you less for taking abilities above 16.

The author spends a bit of time examining why you would want to use some methods over others, which is a nice touch. However, none of the presented methods address the sort middle ground “compromise” between random and point buy that I have come to favor.

Modern20 retains a “layered” approach to character generation, but in contrast with D20 Modern, Modern20's approach is more “layered”. Where D20 Modern featured a “starting occupation” that provided some additional class skills and possibly feats and/or wealth modifiers, Modern20 provides 3 mechanical elements that modify the base class:
-Backgrounds describe the character's occupation before their time as an adventurer. This provides additional skills and a base wealth for the character (note that wealth operates differently in Modern20 than in D20 Modern.)
-Occupation represents what you currently do for a living. Mechanical, this is probably the most involved of these “class modifiers.” The occupation provides a bonus to your wealth, but the bonus varies according to your skill bonuses. Further, as long as you are practicing this occupation, the skills remain on your skill list. Finally, the character's feat selection is expanded by the occupation, and these feats are “improved” so long as the character remains in the profession. Finally, occupations can provide skill perks. Perks are a subsystem of feat like abilities that provide additional skill uses or other abilities.
-The Hobby represents the simplest of the 3 “class modifiers”. The player may select any skills; the character receives 4 ranks in it (there is no indication that it is added to the class skill list.)

There are no advanced or prestige classes in Modern20. There are 6 base classes, but their founding philosophy is slightly different than the ability score based classes of D20 Modern. Rather, the Modern20 classes are founded around the derived statistics they generate:

The 6 base classes of Modern[sup]20[/sup] are:
-The Powerhouse is the “attack” specialist.
-The Speedfreak is the defense specialist.
-The Tank is the “hit point” specialist.
-The Braniac is the “skill point” specialist.
-The Empath is the “saving throw” specialist.
-The Star is the “reputation” specialist.

The distinction between the approach of these classes and those of D20 is mild since each of the ability scores feed into one of targeted statistics, but in some cases it does make more sense than D20 Modern (the example that stands out is how strong hero characters in D20 Modern make good marksmen; the powerhouse class of Modern20 is *about* attack bonus instead of being *about* strength.)

It's noteworthy that the braniac has a medium base attack bonus progression, an improvement over the smart hero which I always felt was a difficult class to play in D20 Modern.

Similar to Spycraft (and other D20 works by Kevin Wilson, like games in FFG's Horizon line) and True20, each of the classes in Modern20 feature a core ability that is only received by a character taking their first level in the class.

Another shift from D20 Modern is the removal of talent trees. Much like True20, each character receives a feat at every level, selected from a class feat list or a general list, thus supplanting talent trees.

Reputation, action points, allegiances, and wealth also appear here. Allegiances see the least changes, and action points are a bit more succinct. Wealth and reputation systems see bigger changes.

The wealth system gives the character a wealth rating, but there is no rolling involved. It is still an abstract system, but the way it works is to provide a threshold beneath which the character needn't worry about tracking expenditures. Above the wealth level, purchases decrease the character's wealth (and conversely, selling valuable items increase it.) Thus, wealth still remains a system where player good behavior or GM intervention is required to avoid some unbelievable situations, but it seems like it would be less unwieldy in play.

Reputation sees more extensive changes. Instead of merely providing a skill bonus or penalty in social encounter, reputation provides resources in the form of special access, contacts, favors, and followers.

RPGObjects' variant of the disadvantage system shows up here. Similar to the one crafted in Haven D20 and RPGObjects' Modern Disadvantages, these disadvantages provide benefits to the character only if it shows up in an adventure. This version differs in that it provides action points when the disadvantage rears its ugly head rather than experience points. However, the words “experience awards” are still used in the description in some places.

In Modern20, skills see many alterations. For starters, the skill list is almost totally different. Much like True20 and Spycraft 2.0, many skills that existed in D20 Modern are combined into other more comprehensive skills like academics, acrobatics, athletics, and perception.

One change that seems unique to D20 variants is the idea of a “targeted skill check”, which replaces opposed skill checks. When I first heard about this, I was a bit worried, as I think that opposed checks are a technique that D20 handles well, and shows a significant strength of the system over those of the last century. Alas, targeted skill checks are in essence the same thing as opposed skill checks with one party automatically taking 10. This stands to minimize the amount of dice rolling to resolve skill conflicts and should create more consistent results.

Perks were mentioned previously. Perks creature special uses of skills that can only be accessed by characters with the perk in question. For example, skills with specialties (like academics, art, or crime) are handled with perks; each specialty past the first in an additional perk. Other perk skill uses include tumble under acrobatics, “cracking” under computers, and burst fire under firearms.

The combat rules are, on the surface, very similar to standard D20 combat. The biggest change is that the system uses a hit location chart. This uses a d20 roll and the damage is modified according to where the injury landed. An optional injury rule has the potential to inflict penalties on a character; determining whether and what injury applies requires that you find the difference between the attack roll and defense rating, and comparing a fortitude save to a number determine by the attack roll. Given the lengths that the author went to reduce skill rolls, it seems odd that he would accept a system like this that seems more complicated than the rolls he took out.

A final significant departure from D20 is that the system eschews the idea of experience points.

Two appendices are included: a character creation example and a list of sample NPCs similar to those that appeared in D20 Modern.

Conclusions:

Modern20 is a top-down redefinition of the D20 Modern game system. Several sore spots with the system are addressed, and the designer makes some interesting innovations along the way.

The character generation is perhaps the most interesting retooling of the game. It should appeal most to players who like creating characters using D20 Modern base classes; much like Grim Tales, the system does not utilize advanced or prestige classes. This could be a detriment for players who like to “subscribe” to a class concept and don't want to make a lot of decisions along the way.

The most interesting aspect of the character generation system is that it provides in-game representation of what might be considered more mundane aspects of a character's background, and even represents things like occupation changes in play. All told, I think this makes Modern20 an excellent choice for “everyman hero” gaming, where the characters are realistic and well defined characters.

The system does handle many of the hangups I have with the D20 Modern combat system nicely, namely nonlethal damage and firearm rules. However, while the idea of inserting a hit location system into a D20 game had promise (something I do in my own d20 house rules), I think the optional injury rule runs counter to the streamlining he tries to achieve elsewhere.

Return to the Tomb of Horrors takes the classic meatgrinder Tomb of Horrors and spins it into something more... a high level campaign arc in which the PCs struggle against desperate odds to stop an ancient evil from realize his frightening agenda.

An excellent candidate for conversion to 3.5.

DISLIKED: In some places, the OCR of the electronic version is a little shoddy. Sadly, this occurs where you need to copy and paste the most: the shaded "read aloud" text.

The adventure begins is a collection of small adventures designed for low level characters. The adventures are written by a variety of authors. However, these adventures are not simple collections of monsters written up in rooms. There are some clever puzzles, logical setups, and intriguing implications associated with many of them. In one adventure, the players find a room of candles that could one day return them to life. Another adventure features encounters very good at teaching players aspects of the game. Still another introduces players to psionic opponents.

Book of the Righteous is the classic pantheon product by Green Ronin. For me, and many others, this is the deity product that the Deities & Demigods should have been: a rich expose on the deities within, their lore, and details on their churches and followers.

This makes Book of the Righteous one of the most compelling sources for Pantheons for fantasy RPG settings.

This (PDF) version of the book splits off and updates the Holy Warrior's Handbook (also sold separately) to 3.5 mechanics. The Holy Warrior is, essentially, a Paladin whose abilities are largely replaced with "domains" to make it appropriate to deities other than Lawful Good deities, and further, reflecting specific aspects of the deities.

LIKED: The detailed, flavorful, and well written pantheon.

The Holy Warrior.

DISLIKED: Though the holy warrior was updated to 3.5, many of the remaining mechanics were never updated. Some character options need some attention to be playable.

The Jade Magi sewer crawl invites the PCs to act as troublshooters to take care of the problem with a few oversized creepy-crawlies, and investigate the reason behind them.

The adventure, the title might suggest, has a Chinese flavor to it. The characters have Chinese sounding names and the background details about the Dragon Empire are styled like that of ancient China. This is not a huge obstacle if you aren't running a campaign with such a setting, as many of the conventions could exist in a traditional faux-European setting, but playing up the Chinese flavor could aid in setting a unique tone for the module. No special mechanics are use to reflect a Chinese culture.

The adventure is structured with the first 2/3 or so with the party interacting with the locals and troubleshooting problems with creatures rising from the sewers. In addition to the old school monster bashing, the PCs get to deal with corrupt guard captains, oversexed teenagers sizing up adventurers for husbands, and a cooky old sage that you will surely picture portrayed by Victor Wong.

The last part gives way to more traditional dungeon crawl, when the PCs find clues to the reason behind all this mayhem.

Overall, I find that the adventure has a depth in NPC characterization and great roleplaying potential that is missing from many d20 adventures. I highly recommend it.

LIKED: Interesting scenario, well developed NPCs, amusing storyline.

DISLIKED: It's statted for 3.0. This isn't too big an issue because the specifics of NPC abilities aren't terribly important, and most creatures are right out of the MM/SRD, thus easy to update.

A Touch of Evil, Vol. 2: Hobgoblins brings you a smattering of fully developed hobgoblin NPCs. Each has a description of background, personality, and possible uses, and each has advanced versions, allowing you to scale it to different levels.

The characters are deep and interesting, making compelling villains, neutrals, and yes, allies.

LIKED: The depth of character backgrounds, the advanced versions, the artwork.

Advanced Races Codex: Elves is a segment of the never-realized volume by Green Ronin, updating and adding new race material for the 3.5 d20 fantasy rules.

As you might suspsect, the cheif resource for this book is Green Ronin's wood elf book, Bow & Blade. However, that book was a 3.5-ready book to begin with, so this book will not be as appealing to those who already own this book.

The main new (or mostly new) material in the book is the new elf subraces, which push the book's scope modestly beyod that of mere wood elves. Some other material is reused, such as the Bamboo Elf from Jade Dragons and Hungry Ghosts.

Only a fraction of the Bow & Blade material is reused here, but most of the fears, prestige classes, and spells are from Bow & Blade.

LIKED: Some new subraces provided a few new options.

DISLIKED: There was little material beyond that already presented in Bow & Blade. If you are looking for a book on elves, despite the narrower focus on Bow & Blade, I think you are better off gettng that book. If you do already have it, there is little reason to get this book unless you are seeking out new subraces.

Spycraft 2.0 is making its mark as more than just another d20 spinoff, having garnered nominations for both the ENWorld/GenCon RPG Awards (ennies) and the Diana Jones award for excellence in gaming.

For those not already familiar with Spycraft 2.0, it's a complete retooling of the Spycraft system. It is not based on d20 modern, but a stand-alone game. The game includes a number of useful innovations such as campaign qualities (allowing you to shift the feel of the campaign with concrete rules tweaks) and dramatic conflicts (providing tense and dramatic resolution for conflicts other than straight up battles, from chases to seduction and hacking, all using the same subsystem.) Spycraft 2.0 is a dream system for modern action.

The PDF updates the book to the second printing, with numerous clarifications and corrections. In addition, the gear chapter has been rearranged for ease of use. There are a few minor renamings and similar trivial changes.

The authors obviously spent a good amount of time ensuring that the document is as correct and useful as possible.

LIKED: A game as robust as SC 2.0 really benefits from being deployed in electronic format.

DISLIKED: It is a bit higher priced compared to the print version than I usually expect... but as the print version was something of a steal, this isn't much of a complaint.

I saw this one a while ago, but put off getting it because it seemed to me like another instance of Grimtooth's Traps or Traps & Treachery, books which, while they do their topic well, see little use in my game. But being intrigued by the subtitle "Traps of the World Before", I decided to give it a go.

The book does, indeed, have traps. But these are not merely traps in the Grimtooth "let's see how high we can get the body count while the GM gleefully grins over the fiendishness of the trap." These "traps" are as much artifacts of a bygone age as they are mere traps.

The trap writeups leave room for dealing with the challenges on both the player ingenuity level and the PC skill level.

LIKED: Traps are flavorful and thus seem easier to insert in a game; with Grimtooth and T&T, I feel like I am either struggling to explain the presence of a trap or like I am "breaking the fourth wall" by broadcasting the presence of a GM. These traps seemed much more sensible, much more plausible as possible artifacts of an ancient culture.

DISLIKED: Multiple instances of the affect/effect gaffe (a majority of instances of "affect" should have been "effect".) This is my personal pet peeve of grammar errors.

The fey in official books seem to be drawn from a narrow set of archetypes, hardly worth having their own monster type. Third party publishers can address this need, but it is all too easy to do it wrong. It would be easy to present fey as just more sword fodder.

The Iconic Bestiary - Classic Fey addresses all that. It is nice collection of classic fey creatures drawn from myth and folklore. And it does make them more than simple sword fodder. It is challenging to portray fey creatures given their often utterly alien mindset and the aura of superstition associated with them. Classic Fey provides interesting and flavorful guidelines helping to preserve this supernatural feel to fey, with a nice array of details in each one - encounter guidelines, adventure ideas, and knowledge entries.

LIKED: The background and detail on fey behavior. The feats are great to add variety and unpredictability. Adventure hooks and knowledge roll results are also always welcome in creature books, and especially applicable here.

DISLIKED: I'm not so sure that some of the creatures captured herein classify as fey in my mind.

Troll Lords is not my usual fare, but I have enjoyed products by them like Path of the Magi. I am always interested in "setting component" type products, and when I saw Jeff Ibach (of AEG's Toolbox) was heading it up, I figured it might be a worthwhile purchase.

I wasn't disappointed. For the price, it delivers a lot of useful little towns that your players should have fun with. Each has both mechanical and setting flavor detail. With this product in hand (or on hard drive), you needn't expose your players to a stream of generic villages on the journey to the adventure. And each locale also has adventure hooks, both for those within or passing through the village.

Despite the headline of the title, there aren't any formal "city" sized settlements in this book. This makes it quite likely that it will fall beneath the level of settlement that are typically given much attention in full sized settings. As such, it should be easy to use most of this material with most settings.

DISLIKED: Lack of Bookmarks. Though the book is 3.5, the psionics in it are not.

The classic sourcebook on Demons and Devils, with an all new section on Daemons, creatures with plots revolving around sin (specifically the seven deadly sins). This last aspect makes them all the more convenient to write plots around or give PCs personal involvement. New material has also been added to the other sections, and two new core classes, the thaumaturge and unholy warrior, are included.

LIKED: Legions of Hell is an old standby section, and Hordes of Gehenna is a new favorite.

I especially appreciate that Green Ronin took the time to apply errata to the electronic version (in this case, psionics has been updated to the 3.5/XPH version; the hardcover was originally written to the old psionics handbook where it was used.)

DISLIKED: Armies of the Abyss still is not my favorite section. To much of the material is hentai-inspired or otherwise gross or silly in an attempt to be edgy by including references to sex, and continue this trend with new creatures added in this version. (Living demon semen? Nothankyou sir, not in my game...)